Wikipedia

You all knew it was coming, so I might as well get it over with. This rant will sorta flip-flop between supporting Wikipedia and throwing mud at them. Either way, it should be quite entertaining for the readers.

First off, I support what Wikipedia is doing. I think the concept is amazing. It's a knowledgebase of everything, created by everyone, editable (and thereby improvable) by anyone. It reminds me of Linux and the open-source community. Someone comes along and creates a great piece of software/information, then the users get to make improvements to it without any bias from the author as to its efficiency or otherwise. This means that the data goes through countless, and I mean COUNTLESS, filters, each one improving what the original and the previous patch failed to fix. In the words of the almighty computer god Linus Torvalds, "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow", meaning peer review does in fact serve its purpose. As such, I wish all the teachers and others who call Wikipedia articles "incredible" (in the bad sense of the word) would learn what peer review really means. You know what I think? Well, of course you do, but...they need to admit the only reason they don't want us using Wikipedia for research is because it makes finding information on exactly what you want easy and fast! That's right, boys and girls! Using Wikipedia is a great alternative to using Google.

Seriously, am I the only one who is tired of trying to write a research paper on Dill pickles, going to Google, typing in "Dill pickles", sifting through 70 pages of crap, finally finding a link that looks good, clicking it, and being taken to a Scandinavian porn site?! I hate the entire idea of researching topics. It's flawed, but Ill get to that in a different rant. The point is, if I'm doing research on the Internet, I don't want porn! Put it in a pop-up window, send it to my e-mail, call my phone during dinner time about it, whatever. Just keep it out of my way when there are thousands of dollars of tuition riding on my ability to find a site that tells me what I want to know.

OK, so as I promised, now it's time to tell you what Wikipedia is doing wrong. Simply put, they are Nazis. Each article is assigned a handful of Nazis who check the editing history of the article, and undo any changes you make to it. They are the only ones allowed to be right. If asked why they reverted your edit that took 15 minutes to type up and added needed information to it, they will tell you "citations needed" or some other stupid crap. I always find that excuse funny, because about 90% of the article lacks citations. Now, I hate the thought of citing (see above), but I believe in consistency. If you are going to require every word to have a citation, how about just make the article read "The (Bible, 1 A.D,)."

So, yes, Wikipedia has some retards with no lives that we need to destroy, but I think with some human ingenuity and exploding Star Wars collectibles, we can do it. As for the teachers, they will probably never acknowledge Wikipedia as credible and therefore must have their wages lowered so low that they won't even check for correct citation. Problem solved. See, America? You should've made ME president.

Sexism At Home

I love talking to people who dont understand the meaning of racism, sexism, ethicism, or even praline-pecan-ism, the most delicious -ism to ever exist. People just dont get that racism and sexism are give-and-take, not take-and-take. They are about EQUALITY. What does equality mean, boys and girls? Thats right! It means everyone is equal! It doesnt mean you are inclined to more of something than someone of a different race, or that you are inclined to different treatment based on whether your reproduction organs are inside or out. I could go on for days about examples of racial and gender equality being unbalanced, but Ill spare you all with one of my favorites.

Women expect men to leave the toilet seat down so when they go to use it, they dont become a warthog fresh from wallowing in the waters of the [insert river of your choice starting with 'W'] river. I always found it hilarious that men are expected to check the seat before squirting the daisies, but women cant do the same. One girl I talked to once said "Well, if its late at night and I have to go to the bathroom, I dont want to have to check to see if the seat is down." Oh, really? What a coincidence! Me neither! That would probably explain why the toilet seat has distinct yellow marks all over the place and the smell of, well, a toilet. In all honesty, youre probably doing your health a favor by dunking your doughnut when you have to go potty instead of coming in contact with the public restroom replica seat. Obviously we have to come to some sort of common ground here to end this blatant sexism in the female favor. You know, in a lot of cultures, men are the dominant species and women are expected to do all sorts of stuff for them. Maybe women should start raising the toilet seat for men? Nah, western swingers are way too chivalrous for that. That leaves us with three choices: [One] Get over yourselves, your laziness, and your perceived gender entitlements and just start checking the toilet seat before you sit down like men do to create gender equality, [Two] Unconditionally grant sexual favors, dinner, and all the other male demands to create the 'give' in the give-and-take equation, or [Three] men just start sitting down to pee, and you live with the stains on the adjacent walls from our lack of controllable flagstaffs. I wouldnt mind option two, actually, but Im sure we can all agree on the benefits to both genders with option one.

Microwaves

Microwaves are like the bane of the home kitchen appliances. For one, the name alone is lame. A Microwave uses microwaves to heat up food. Wow, so the device is named the exact same as the technology it uses? How lame-brained were the inventors of it? I think a much more suitable name for it would have been "Magical cancer box that turns the outside of my hot pockets into molten dough, but doesnt heat up all of the inside." It never fails that when I put some food in the microwave that was in the refrigerator from the night before, the plate gets so hot I have to hold it with an oven mitt, and the surface of the food gets so hot I cant eat it directly after heating it up, but the food that isnt in contact with the air feels like I just took it out of the freezer. And why is it that I heat the food up so hot? I dont know. I guess its because I was under the impression that if I did, it would affect ALL the food I put in and not just the surface. Then, if youre in a hurry or really hungry, you dont have time to play the stir-it-up-and-put-it-back-in game. So youre likely to burn the crap out of our lip with the first bite, then get a brainfreeze with the second. You would think that since we are in a sophisticated technological society, we would all be able to go out to Walmart and buy microwaves that actually reheat food all the way through.

It doesnt stop with the actual heating, either. Youve also got to wrestle with these buttons. Youve got the digit buttons that dont work when you press them once, so you press them harder and put the number on the display twice. Since there isnt a back button to erase just one of the digits, youve got to press the clear button and redo the whole time. Hopefully you dont do the same thing the second time, or you might be sitting in front of the microwave all day crying "I just wanted my pizza warmed! Why have you forsaken me, Microwave God?" Then youve got the thousands of other buttons that no one ever uses, probably because no one knows what they do. Youd pull out the manual to check them, but you threw that out a long time ago because you figured using a microwave is fairly straight-forward. As a result, youve got Mode, Sensor, Program, Omega 3, and other buttons just collecting dust. Its like a big, radioactive graphing calculator.

HopeLine Promotion

No, its not a rant or some other joke as usual. Im going to take a break from all of that to help promote two of the services that I think truly got "it" right.



Im subscribed to The PostSecret Project. PostSecret is like a catalog of human emotion. Every day, random people send in anonymous post cards with their most closely guarded secrets on one side of them, and every Sunday, a couple are selected to be posted on the PostSecret site. It is a truely great concept and I believe its one of the best credits to humanity. A couple of my friends and I have sent in some secrets of our own. Its a great feeling to know youre being listened to without judgement.

Recently, PostSecret asked those of us with the ability to promote HopeLine to do so if possible. Im doing my part. All of my websites now feature the above video on the front page. Its my way of saying thanks. Thank you HopeLine, thank you Post Secret, thank you for all that you do.

Nintendo Killed The Wii

The newest thing to be added to Nintendos already awesome arsenal is the downloadable content called WiiWare. These are games that you can buy from the Shop Channel, much like Virtual Console games. In fact, they are exactly like them in every way, except that they are often created by third-party programmers and the reason for this rant; THEY ARE HUGE! Seriously, the size of some of these games is astonishing. Now, if youre like me, you think "Oh! Size on a game cosole is no problem!" Yea...What you forget is that we are talking about the Wii here! Nintendo, in their infinite knowledge, thought it would be a good idea to limit the internal memory to somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 megs.

First off, are you kidding me? 500 megs is really all you can spare us, Nintendo? Ive got a $15 flash drive that can hold 2 gigs! Its surely not much bigger than your measely 500-meg hardware, and Id be happy to add $15 to my purchase to get those 2 gigs.

Second, the reason Im complaining about this small size. While Nintendo so graciously granted us the ability to plug in Gamecube memory cards and SD cards to store more data, the Wii cant run games from them! So, if youve got more than 500 megs worth of WiiWare and VC games, you are forced to juggle them between the built-in memory and external methods. This is unacceptable. If I want to play Star Fox one second, then play Zelda another, then switch over to My Life As A King, the only thing I should have to do is click the game from the Wii menu. None of this wrangling-with-memory-usage crap! If I wanted to play that game, Id go back to my Gamecube and see how many save files I could cram on a memory card before having to use another one.

Nintendo, I can safely speak for all of us when I say you completely fouled up the gaming experience. You alone killed the otherwise awesome love machine we affectionately refer to as the Wii. Until you offer an update that allows the Wii to run games from SD cards, or a service to upgrade the on-board memory, I will be upset with you and your awesome games that I cannot download and play because Im too lazy to swap around a million files. Really, come on. What were you thinking? You have failed.

Posts Pulled

I decided some of my old posts were a little too serious or biased, and took away from the comedic atmosphere of this blog. So, I commented them out.

Laughs all around, and the beers are on me! ^^

The Ultimate Cell Phone

A while ago, I got into a debate with a friend over how cell phone makers can justify selling hand-held devices for as much as they do. This ultimately led to us breaking down all the features a cell phone can have, versus how many people actually want those features in a phone. Well, a household-name cell phone company recently polled people who wanted or already had a cellular communication device. The management sat down and tossed around some ideas, citing the results of the polls.

They decided to start with a palm-sized, fat device that could only allow the user to talk into it and play back the voice of someone else with one. However, this wouldnt sell too well since the market for cell phones apparently wanted phones for more than just talking and also had the mentality that thinner is more convenient as well as "sexier", and every self-respecting business owner knows sex sells. So, they made the brick-sized device about as thin as their index finger, citing that poll results showed people hate fragile phones and drop them often. This meant they couldnt make the devices paper-thin because they would break way too easily.

Next, they looked at reception. A big turn-off for the polled people was the thought of being in the middle of a call and having it cut out unexpectedly. So, they added an antennae that jutted out from the phone. This lowered the attractiveness of the phone, so they opted to put the antennae inside the phone, which meant they had to expand the phone since the antennae was so long as to allow excellent reception no matter where the user would be.

The makers realized that the phone was lacking software and other communication options. The phone users demanded that they have a way of sending text-based messages, as well as access to the internet, especially to check MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. They added the software to do so, along with a teeny-tiny keyboard which fit over the numbers. But, another problem arose; the polls showed that another common complaint was that the users fingers would get cramped from using the small keyboard. So, they created a larger keyboard that attached to the phone. This was definately not attractive at all and was way too much work to have to carry around two different devices, so they put the phone screen on one panel, and the keyboard device on another, and hinged them. A flip phone!

Now, people were saying they wanted to be able to put music on their phones and plug headphones into them. They added the ports and software accordingly. The people were still not satisfied. They wanted the ability to take pictures and video like a camera as well. The software and camera was added.

The makers were almost satisfied with their new product, except for one last thing pointed out by the poll. People found it irritating that their cell phone screens were so small that they had to strain their eyes to read them. They decided that since the keyboard was already so big, they could fill the entire top panel with the screen. Another annoyance was that you had to use the keys to select what you wanted to do on your phone. People wanted a pointing device. The makers added it to the bottom panel along with the keyboard. Everyone was finally satisfied with the end product. The device sold out within a matter of days. Here is what the product looked like:



The moral of this story is that if you want a cell phone for more than just talking, YOU DONT WANT A PHONE! Buy a laptop! A decent one costs about as much as a cell phone anyways! What makes this story so funny is that it is, in a way, a true story. I asked a couple people what they liked and disliked about their phones and got answers that led me to believe these solutions were realistic.

"My World" Follow-Up

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My World

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Truth

Well, this should be a nice little break from the seriousness of my last post.

"The truth is like sunlight...People used to think it was good for you." Every day, I find that quote to be more and more true. If you ask me a question and ask for a completely truthful answer, Im not going to sugar-coat it for you. Thats what the truth is. Its the blunt answer without any alterations. If you cant handle the truth, then why would you ask to hear it? Lately, people have been asking me for the truth about a lot of different things, and every time I give them the full-hearted true answer, they get upset at me for doing so. I tell it like it is, and I expect other people to do the same to me. I would much rather take the truth than a lie, even if the truth hurts, and I would NEVER get upset at someone for doing so.

People are so greedy. They want everything tailored to themselves. They want to hear the truth, but only if its convenient for them. They cant stand the idea of someone lying to them, yet they lie to everyone if it fits their agenda. They want to live in a world created for themselves, and they arent willing to create it themselves. They want to live on the fruits of someone elses labor, while completely refusing to be the laborer for someone else.

Life

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Intelligence

Anyone who knows me knows how I feel about Society and what they classify as "intelligence". Intelligence to the rest of the world is NOT how smart you are, but how high the numbers on your report card are. Im here to set the definition straight. Intelligence is not measurable by a number or letter. It is not how much you can retain, but rather how much you can apply. Being the rogue individualist I am, I refuse to do all my work in school. In fact, I havent done a homework assignment in over 5 years! I see it as useless and a waste of my time to do every single assignment given to me. There is no reward. What do you get for doing your schoolwork? An additional number in the grade books that slightly affects that number on your report card? Wow, yes, thats definately something to be proud of. To keep up with schoolwork is to be stressed, constantly tired, and just flat-out not have that much fun with life.

Ive had teachers, friends, and family members all ask me why I dont do all of my schoolwork. The simple answer I tell them is I refuse to do more than what is required of me. If I can pass the class with a 70, why should I try to get anything higher than that? What incentive is there for getting a grade higher than what is absolutely necessary to pass? The reply I get is usually something about employers or colleges looking at grades. Well, Im not planning on going to college, so thats no problem. As for employers, if they want to gauge me by a make-believe standard set up by Society, then I dont want to work for them.

Printers

Have you noticed every time you need to print something, your printer is either out of ink or it just decides to be retarded? How hard is it to get this little machine perfected so that I dont have to stress out every time someone mentions the word "print"? I mean, weve got computers that can crack the Human Genome, render realistic three-dimensional graphics, and communicate around the world ALL AT THE SAME TIME, yet we cant get this little machine whose sole purpose of existance is to take whats shown on the monitor and put it on a piece of paper to do just that? For that, I believe the inventor of the printer should be shot, and the people still manufacturing these craptastic machines without even trying to make them actually work should be exiled to an island inhabited by vending machines that take your money, but either always complain that they are out of snacks or just flat-out dont work. How ironic. Having said all of that, I believe printers should be recognized world-wide as the retarded cousin of computers that want to be awesome like computers, but are too stupid to do anything about it.

My New Laptop

So, I got a brand-new Dell XPS M1530 laptop for christmas. Its speced out for gaming and software development. It wouldve costed like $300 extra to get Windows XP installed on it, so my parents just stuck with slapping Vista on it. Now, this is the first time Ive actually gotten to use Vista, but just like everyone else, I heard it sucked. And, for the most part, I was right. Vista is basically XP with better graphics and less software compatibility. Good job, Microsoft. Youve made another thing that sucks. But, meh, it grows on you. Vista DOES have some pretty cool advantages. But, thats beside the point.

I decided one day that I wanted to type up a document. So, I clicked the Start button, hovered over the ole All Programs link, and began the hunt for Microsoft Word. And, wouldnt you know it? Microsoft Word wasnt on the laptop. In fact, there werent any word processors installed on the machine. Are you kidding me? So, Im forced to type up a document in, what, Notepad or Wordpad? What is that crap about? Just because Microsoft is too cheap to package some type of GOOD word processor with its operating system, Im reduced to using some half-assed text editing program. Microsft Word isnt even that good! What does Microsoft Word have that other word processors dont have? That annoying little paperclip office assistant guy? Yea, Id really be getting my moneys worth if I bought Microsoft Office separately. Thanks, Microsoft, you really suck. Why dont I just stick with Linux, where everything is free and doesnt crash every two seconds? Every day, I find it harder to tell people I like Windows more than the soleless Macs. If I wasnt so lazy, Id probably convert all my computers to Ubuntu Linux. And while Im at it, Id get a pocket protector and work for Geek Squad at Best Buy. The saddest part of that is Im actually considering working for Geek Squad. I suppose geeks are the new jocks.

Welcome

Well, today some people were on my case about making a REAL blog. As some of you may know, I already have a Devlog. This blog will be dedicated to my incoherent ramblings about the world and all that jazz. No posts are meant to offend anyone. But, if youre a sensitive, self-conscious person that takes everything as a personal attack, this blog probably isnt right for you. This is the one and probably only disclaimer youll get.

Also, this blog wasnt made with the intention to change anyones mind about anything, but rather to make them think "Gee, he might have a point!" I dont force my opinions on others. For the most part, this is pretty much for entertainment. With all of that said, enjoy! ^^